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Halfway into our trip, Barbara decided to kick the bucket. She had been indispensable to me, ( profoundly directionally challenged gal that I am), and was always a good sport, stoically putting up with our light hearted teasing.

“I can give you a better route,” Barbara would intone.

“Ha ha, settle down, Babs, we’re just getting off the interstate to get some gas”. I’d laugh.

“Recalculating!”

In case you haven’t already guessed, “Barbara” is our GPS unit, and I love her.

But Sunday morning she didn’t want to cooperate. The Feis didn’t begin for us until 12:00 noon, (very unusual, feisanna usually start at 8:30 on a Sat. morning). I guess they were giving people time to go to church, which was good, because last Sunday was Pentecost, and it was also Memorial Day weekend, and all church going people needed to be in church praying for our soldiers.

So, I got the address of the nearest Catholic church from the Hotel clerk and headed to the van with the girls. I had my oldest daughter give Barbara the address, while I tried to back out, which was really tricky because it was a very crowded parking lot, and I have a bigass conversion van, and there was a truck parked right behind me. And Barbara was saying there was no such street in Memphis, (now I realize this was because we weren’t in Memphis proper). So my daughter rather abruptly tore her off her stand, so she could work with her more comfortably on her lap, but she wouldn’t work off of her stand, and we couldn’t get her to lock back into it.

Tick tick tick….8:55….8:56….8:57….

Things were getting desperate, and the more stressed Nice Deb gets, apparently, the less adept she gets at pulling out of tight parking spots….which didn’t matter at this point anyway because I didn’t know where I was going.

8:58….8:59….9:00 (mass time) …9:01…9:02….9:03…

After fiddling for what seemed an eternity, we got Barbara back in her slot, but she refused to work.

So this is my public confession that I didn’t go to church last Sunday. I felt terrible, but the girls were rather cheerful about it.

My husband thinks he knows what to do to fix her, he has a friend that works for Garman.

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Well, the most noteworthy stuff actually happened while we were waiting in line for the shuttle. I didn’t really find the house to be all that impressive. I had expected everything to be much bigger.
The first thing I noticed was the house’s low ceilings. I understand, Elvis. My house was built in the 1930’s, too, before builders figured out you could make a room look twice as big by giving it a high ceiling.

The decor was very shlocky, a lot of fur, mirrors, a jungle room(!). The kitchen had dark cabinets like mine, (and you should all know how I feel about my kitchen, by now), and was a decent size (bigger than mine, that’s for sure) but not enormous like many of today’s kitchens are. (That’s his kitchen on the cover of the recipe booklet shown in the picture). His appliances were harvest gold, which was the standard in the ’70’s.

He had a lot of rooms, but they were all fairly modest sized rooms. Not what I was expecting at all. Even his pool was quite small, about the size of my pool, only with a diving board. Lisa Marie played on a swing set not unlike the ones you and I played on. Nothing fancy.

The walls were lined with all of his platinum records, scores of them; and there was a room with clothing displays from his wedding, and concerts. You know, judging from the size of those jumpsuits, even in Elvis’ later years, he never really got that fat. He probably just looked kind of bloated when the outfits got a little tight, but they weren’t very large jumpsuits. (Again, not as big as I thought!)

Elvis built his Meditation Garden in the mid sixties as a place for quiet contemplation. The bodies of Elvis and his mother were moved here in Oct. ’77, after security threats at his original resting place of Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis. Also buried there are his father, and Minnie Mae, his grandmother. There is also a marker for Elvis’ stillborn baby brother. There were displays of flowers and stuffed animals at each grave; I’m not sure how they decided which ones to display from the scores of memorial gifts that have been sent to the King over the years.

Elvis was described by all as a very humble, thoughtful, and courteous man.

How many people make it to that level of stardom, and can still be described that way?

I came away from the visit with a new appreciation and fondness for the man… and oh… a few cheesy souvenirs, too.

Adam Gadahn, a convert to Islam who has been indicted for treason by a US jury, issued a list of demands and warned they were not up for negotiation.

“Your failure to heed our demands means that you and your people… will experience things that will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Virginia Tech,” he said in the video posted on Tuesday.

“You’re losing on all fronts and losing big time,” said Gadahn, who is the English-language spokesman for Osama bin Laden’s terror network. (emphasis mine).

Harry Reid would concur. BIG TIME.

I found it interesting that he mentioned the Virginia Tech shootings in the same breath as, Sept. 11, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

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We almost skipped it because the girls slept in so late, and I wanted to get home at a decent hour, but the girls really moved once they were up, and really seemed to want to go….so we checked out of the hotel at 11:00 am. and were boarding the shuttle to take us to the mansion by 12:00 pm.

After we bought the tickets, and were waiting to board the shuttle, we went to the ice cream parlor and got milkshakes, which came in commemorative black Elvis cups that I was determined to keep, and bring home.

While we were waiting in the shuttle line, a security dude came by and told us we wouldn’t be able to bring the milkshakes on the shuttle; we could keep the cups, but we’d have to finish the milkshakes. Well, dammit these milkshakes were huge, and I had just spent 20 big ones on the four shakes and one soft pretzel, (which we shared). We all started slurping our shakes as fast as we could, which sort of took the enjoyment out of the treat, you know what I’m saying? My youngest panicked when she saw a shuttle approaching, and threw the rest of hers away in the nearest trash can. The rest of us managed to finish, but now I was stuck holding four sticky, drippy cups for the tour. And that shuttle wasn’t for us, so we got to wait a little longer.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention the people standing in front of us. Three Scandis! Two women, a butch, dumpy ‘Rosie’ type, and a thin, straggly haired tattooed one wearing… get this… a spaghetti strapped dress with a low back revealing her not strapless bra. It was not hot, WP, you would not hit that. She also smelt strongly of BO. My oldest was sniffing our armpits, going, “who smells like BO?” I had to gesture towards the woman, “pssst, stupid, it’s her.” The third Scandi was a dude dressed up like Elvis. Yep. An Elvis, hanging out with these two chicks, and speaking some Germanic language. Weird, weird weird! In all fairness, he was a better Elvis than the one at the ceili the night before.

The security dude came back and hassled my eleven year old a little. “Ahm afraid we cain’t let you in wearing that shirt.”

She was wearing an AC/DC shirt.

“Heh heh”, we laughed nervously. “Good one.”

He hung around us for a while and chatted, which was fine, but he overstayed his welcome.

“Well, ya’ll have a good time on the tour,” he said.

“Oh, don’t worry, we will!”

More chatting…..

“Well, ya’ll enjoy the tour, now.”

“Yep.”

More chatting….

“Well, ya’ll enjoy the tour.”

“LEAVE US ALONE!!!!” Okay, I didn’t say that, but I was thinking it.

Soon, we moved up the line, got our pictures taken, were given our headsets, and boarded the shuttle. We were on our way to Graceland!